Read Novel Full Chapter 1334 The Anomaly Makes His Move
Chapter 1334 The Anomaly Makes His Move
The barrier shuddered again.
Light along its surface wavered, no longer flowing smoothly. Sections dimmed, then flared in uneven pulses as if the spell itself was struggling to breathe. But, at the same time…
The battle below was no longer a total rout for the Ravenshade defenders.
Undead lines that had surged through the outer districts were slowing, their advance breaking into uneven pockets of resistance. Streets that had been choked with panic now held some structure again. Barricades were being rebuilt from rubble. Signal flares burned steady instead of frantic.
More importantly, the pressure on the settlement's defenders was easing.
Mages were being pulled free from emergency triage one by one. Some staggered, some were carried, but they were alive and casting again. Their focus shifted outward. Threads of mana fed back into the barrier, reinforcing weak points, smoothing fractures before they could spread.
On the walls, engineers adjusted angles and recalibrated. Counterfire began to answer not just the undead but the besiegers as well. This was not enough to turn the tide, but it was enough to slow it greatly.
If this continued, the settlement would hold for long minutes.
If it held long enough, the undead would bleed momentum. Losses would stack. Command cohesion would thin. The next march would begin weaker than planned.
Above it all, Quinlan lifted his gaze.
One by one, his eyes met those of the women around him.
Seraphiel's lips curved upward, sharp and eager. Raika rolled her shoulders once, the motion loose and predatory. Ayame adjusted her grip on her blade, posture settling into lethal calm. Iris straightened. Orianna's fingers flexed. Vex tilted her head and grinned.
No one spoke.
They did not need to.
One by one, all of them nodded at Quinlan, already aware of what was going on.
A grin spread across Quinlan's face, matching his Hexwitch's, slow and unrestrained, and he closed his eyes.
The wind responded to his call immediately.
It shifted, no longer a single steady current but dozens of precise streams branching outward from him. Aurora's conjured shield around them thinned, stretched, then dismantled as each figure was carried away on controlled flows of air.
Serika rose higher, placed far to the east. Black Fang was sent south, isolated enough to let her cut loose without restraint. Raika took a position along the inner arc with her fist already angled downward. Ayame and Orianna were spaced wide apart on opposite flanks, each given clear lines where nothing friendly would cross their paths.
On the other hand, ladies who lacked the brutal, destructive powers of the aforementioned ladies were grouped closer together, such as Lucille, Blossom, Ria, Lyra, and Iris.
These ladies were carried into overlapping positions. Their distances were tight, close enough that their strikes could layer without risk. They formed clusters of pressure rather than single points of destruction.
Each woman steadied herself midair as the wind settled beneath her boots.
<Position confirmed. I'm ready.> Similar voices came in one after another.
Quinlan opened his eyes.
He alone remained at the center, higher than the rest, with nothing near him for a wide stretch of open sky. The space around him was vast and empty, deliberately cleared.
Below, the dwarven cannons fired their next coordinated volley.
The impact rippled across the barrier in a blinding wash of light.
Quinlan raised his hand.
Flame gathered in his palm, not as a surge, but as controlled lines of heat that twisted into shape. For a brief moment, burning letters hung in the air.
'CEASE FIRE'
For half a heartbeat, the world stalled.
"What in the Stonefather's beard is that supposed to mean?" an engineer shouted, nearly dropping a loading core.
"Like hell we're stoppin' now!" another barked. "Give us a few more minutes, and we're through the damn thing!"
"Who taught the sky to write?" someone else muttered while crossing himself with a grease-stained glove.
Just like this, voices rose. Arguments overlapped. Reload teams hesitated, then moved anyway. Their leader hadn't given the order to stop. They refused to listen to a random group of strangers, led by a human man, over their commander.
At the center of it all, the heavily armored dwarven general stared upward with his visor tilted back just enough to fix one eye on the burning words and the figures hovering above the barrier-protected settlement.
"Hells…" he muttered under his breath.
He remembered the promise Quinlan made; it had been delivered to all army generals by the central administration.
According to them, Quinlan promised he'd not slow the war or become a deadweight to the Elvaridan efforts. In fact, all army generals were ordered to meticulously observe and study the group, with special focus on the man leading them.
The Elvaridan leadership wanted to gain as much information on them as possible. To that end, the general exhaled slowly.
"Reload," he ordered. But then, the order to fire did not follow.
Several heads snapped toward him.
"Sir?"
"No fire order?"
"We've got the barrier on the ropes!"
"I said reload," he repeated with a stern voice.
The line, consisting of thousands of heavy machinery and their engineers, obeyed. His men were confused but disciplined. Cannons were primed. Cores locked. Vents cleared. But no command followed.
The general squinted upward.
"Let's see what you're worth. I'll know exactly how much trust to give you after this."
The rounds fired by these beasts weren't cheap. Each core loaded into the cannons had been forged, etched, and stockpiled across generations. Materials had been refined over centuries. Runes maintained by guilds that no longer even existed. Once fired, they were gone. There was no factory that could replace them by next season, let alone overnight.
By his estimate, five more volleys would finish the job. That was, if the undead managed to do their part and kept the human defenders at bay. Which, right now, was questionable at best. The dwarven commander was angrily stroking his long beard, not liking how they already met a bump in the road this early on. The humans put up a slightly better defense than predicted, which in turn made the allotted number of undead minions slightly fewer than needed.
Such a small miscalculation could have large ramifications for the ambitious campaign Elvardia concocted if they had to use up a lot more ammunition, especially if such a scenario played out at different sieges as well.
Three more volleys than planned here, two there, four more elsewhere, and their reserves would already feel tighter than the leadership would've liked.
'That's why…' the dwarf leader grumbled inwardly, 'If that man in the sky could do the work of at least one volley, the savings alone would justify this pause.'
The general exhaled through his nose.
"Hold," he said quietly, then louder, carrying across the lines. "Reload complete. No fire."
A few engineers glanced up again, then back to their instruments. Others muttered under their breath, but no one disobeyed.
The general raised his voice once more.
"Listen up, Sons and Daughters of the Forge. I want every pair of eyes to stay open. I want every detail burned into memory. King Ragnar wants a full report on this anomaly and his allies, and they'll get one worth the ink from our brigade!"
"Aye, boss!" multiple shouted in response, peeling their eyes wide open.
The commander's gaze never left the sky.
Quinlan moved his hands with small, exact motions, fingers flexing as if adjusting unseen levers. The air answered in kind. Each current shifted, angled, thickened, or loosened by intent alone.
The women began to descend.
Serika was given brutal torque with the wind coiling hard behind her before snapping downward. She welcomed it, body aligned to turn speed into force.
Orianna followed, her descent being just as steep. Petals of mana unfurled around her, dense and layered, each one humming as the wind forced them tighter together.
Raika was launched like a thrown weapon. The air howled around her arm as she drew it back, the heat crawling along her knuckles as her momentum climbed past restraint.
Others fell slower by his design.
Vex dropped on a clean, controlled line with just enough speed to sharpen timing without stealing balance. Ayame descended beside another current. Black Fang's fall was slower on purpose so that she could see every line, every weakness waiting to be cut.
Quinlan trusted her to do the utmost damage with a clean cut, for which she needed less speed and more time to process.
From every direction, from every height, they came in just like this.
Some descended faster, others slower. But they were all timed to the same heartbeat, arriving in perfect sync.
Before they reached the barrier, Quinlan shot a wave of fire into the air again.
'FIRE!'
Below, the dwarven general stared up, then barked a laugh that held no humor.
"Has he lost his damned mind?" he growled. "They'll be right in the line of fire! Does he intend to sacrifice his allies for a show of force?! Does his ego matter this much…? Or…?"
He paused.
Then shrugged.
"Whatever. If Black Fang gets flattened, that's one potential headache solved for the future."
His arm dropped.
"Fire!"
The cannons roared.
Above the barrier, the ladies struck in perfect sync.
Serika's fiery punch created a deafening explosion while Raika's fist came down with the air around it collapsing inward as she roared and drove everything she had into the blow.
"[Fist of Annihilation]!"